Friday Night Lights OST

Hip-O;
2004

Find it at:

Located amid arid desert sprawl, Odessa, Texas is home to, among other things, the Globe of the Great Southwest, a replica of the original Shakespeare haunt; the Presidential Museum, a sizeable repository of presidential memorabilia (sorry, the arrival of empty warheads is taking longer than expected); and the Permian High Panthers, on whom Friday Night Lights is based. On the surface, this film adaptation of the popular novel of the same name appears to be a predictable entry in a continually unsurprising genre. But there are some notable differences between this and an infamous piece of bilge like The Program-- including the music, which was composed by Explosions in the Sky.

Explosions in the Sky have always made music of cinematic proportions, so it's fitting that they've found their way to the big screen. The bombast of their instrumental compositions is theatrical in it evocation of outsized landscapes and emotions, casting a colorful but somewhat phony sheen over their stellar playing. But even given EITS's penchant for excess, few could have seen this coming: a mainstream film soundtrack from an underground band whose fanbase is comprised mainly of scenesters with an aversion to contact sports.

On Friday Night Lights, the distortion and dynamism of Explosions in the Sky's erstwhile output has been excised in favor of a gentler approach, one that spotlights the band's skill for nimble interlocking guitar harmonies. On The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, the band took a less dire bent, emphasizing quieter, more optimistic instrumentals where its M.O. had previously been simply to "fucking destroy." Still, that album was a caterwauling racket compared to Friday Night Lights, which features predominantly hushed dynamics and only scant drumming.

All this makes for a rather soporific listen. Of course, soundtracks are designed to reach a synergistic effect with the movies they accompany, so to judge Friday Night Lights on its own is to slight it somewhat. Still, this album's movements are too genteel and calculated to achieve any real stand-alone emotional impact. Furthermore, Explosions in the Sky are guilty of the same paint-by-numbers sentiment triggering than the filmmakers themselves employ-- the band suffused its songs with flaccid MIDI string swells and other overwrought flourishes.

There are some worthwhile moments: "To West Texas" hails Odessa and other barren locales, and featuring a scrappy, ghost-town melody over Chris Hrasky's trademark heartbeat bass-drum pulse. "From West Texas", on the other hand, exalts the Panthers players' faint hope of one day leaving Odessa, providing one of the album's only upbeat tracks. Elsewhere, however, twinkling guitar melodies and dolorous tempos blur into one another and merely sound like tepid background music.

Curiously, the album carries a bleary pre-dawn aura, a tone that was consciously (and thankfully) chosen to avoid the kind of hard-swinging, soft-landing new-metal fisticuffs that accompany many cinematic depictions of athletic drama. At times it seems as if Explosions in the Sky might not be scoring the right movie, although their acquiescence comes is a nice change of pace from the typical Hollywood rock-based score. Had the band delivered the bluster of its previous work, this could have been a more compelling project; as it stands, it's merely an awkward curiousity.